The Bombay dockyard is also worth visiting; it is admirably contrived, and abounds in fine stone warehouses well stocked with timber for building and repairing vessels and ships of all kinds and sizes, with forges, and well-instructed Parsees, who, among other qualifications, are counted the best ship-carpenters to be found in the East. Many of the merchantmen and ships-of-the-line in the service of the late East India Company have been built here from time to time, and are still built, of Malabar and Mylonghee teak-wood, which is much esteemed throughout India. One of the most magnificent teak forests, from which supplies of wood are obtained, lies on the north-western boundaries of the kingdom of Siam; the other on the western side of the Ghauts and all along the mountains lying north and east of the old Portuguese town of Bassein. They are floated down to Bombay by means of the numerous streams which descend from these mountain-ridges. Another curious feature is the celebrated cotton-press, of which there are a great many in use here--marvellous in themselves, but more striking amid the mountains of cotton piled up waiting to be pressed before transportation to Europe, China, and other parts of the world. Not very far from these one comes upon a square around which cluster most of the European warehouses and the banks, huge blocks of masonry, dark and dismal as the tomb, impregnated with the odors of tea, coffee, spices, and every other known Indian commodity or manufacture. It was my first initiation to the commerce of the world to visit this spot. Previous to this day I had hardly so much as purchased a ribbon for myself, and could not conceive what trade really meant. But, driving here about ten o'clock one morning, the whole scene dawned upon me with peculiar force. The great square was thronged with a motley crowd of dark- and white-faced foreigners, all eager, jostling, and contending with each amid the confused hubbub of all languages and all manner of dialects. Here were strange specimens of every nationality and every phase of life, from the lordly English and Scotch merchants, the skilful and assiduous Parsees, to the half-nude, wretched-looking fakeers and beggars who haunt this spot in the hope of getting a few pice.[2] For six hours these masses of humanity struggle, work, barter, buy and sell, load and unload, and carry on the strangely-exciting warfare, not of flesh and blood, but of pounds, shillings, and pence, straining every nerve each to outdo his neighbor, to enrich himself, at great sacrifice of life, health, and at times even of honor, in the hope of returning to his native land to enjoy the spoils--a hope which, alas! is realized only in rare instances.